A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Charlie Louie from Hotly Spiced telling me that she’d received a notice from her webhost that her site was hogging the resources of her shared server and she was in trouble. I passed the information on to John because as a geek, I make a good cake.

He looked and looked and the problem wasn’t obvious so he did what methodical people do, he watched the spike in the CPU usage against what was going on in her traffic and the culprit turned out to be her comments feed. It was looping on itself until finally the server shit itself. I believe that’s the technical term or that’s what John called it anyway. It took him nearly 24 hours to isolate the problem.

All during that day I kept getting updates on where Charlie was in case John needed some information or help. She was on the school run and then there was a lunch she was committed to attend and then there was a meeting and then it was school run again and then there was shopping for dinner. I don’t know how she gets everything done because in addition to all of this, she has a top-class blog, a family to organise, a husband to spend time with AND they have a busy social life. She just gets it done.

Today I was sitting at my desk working and my Charlie started to cry. A few seconds later the doorbell rang and it was Charlie the postman with some packages. How do I know his name is Charlie? The first time he rang the doorbell I yelled, “It’s not for you, Charlie, go outside!”

I opened the door to a guy standing there looking like a deer caught in headlights and he said, “How did you know it was me??” So Charlie the postie has become our friend. He gives Charlie a pat and a treat every time he visits. So now, of course, the doorbell is always for the dog!

One of the packages was for John who’s building a camera trolley to do video work. Will it ever happen? Not sure but I’m looking forward to adding a video or two to Orgasmic Chef.

The other package said it was to Maureen and John and inside was this Fruit and Nut Cake!! I’d just seen photos of the Christmas cake the the day before on Hotly Spiced and thought it looked a lot better than my Christmas pudding. Fancy Christmas puddings are not my favourite.

I ripped open the box while John said, “That’s to me too, right?”

“Not until I take pictures,” I replied. The cake is beautiful and shiny and filled with glace fruit and nuts. As soon as I finished the photographs I brought the cake to the coffee table and we each took a piece.

“It’s filled with fruit and big nuts and almost no cake, I love that,” John said.

You should make this cake. Charlie Louie says it’s perfect for Christmas Eve but frankly, it’s pretty good on December 5th or any other day.

You’ll find the recipe on Hotly Spiced for Festive Fruit and Nut Cake. Thank you, Charlie Louie and you shouldn’t have but I’m really glad you did. 🙂